This is astonishing. Luigi said that a dominant meta-narrative in our circles is that selection and breeding displace diversity. Another is that well-bred monocultures improve yields. There’s always been an opposing point of view, most closely associated with the name of Professor Martin Wolfe. Now no less a leviathan than the United States Department of Agriculture seems to agree.
In a ground-breaking experiment, USDA scientist Christina Cowger made mixtures — blends — of two or more wheat varieties and planted them in experimental plots in North Carolina. The results?
The blends outyielded the pure varieties by an average of 2.3 bushels per acre. … That’s a 3.2-percent yield advantage. Blends and pure varieties did not differ in test weight or quality across environments, and blends were either beneficial or neutral with respect to diseases.
Blends are also more stable from year to year, a fact that may be behind farmers taking matters into their own hands: 10 to 15 per cent of the wheat area of Kansas and Washington states was planted to mixtures over the past four years.
I’m looking forward to seeing the full published paper.